So I went running last night and took Stella to Garrison park. This was really just a ruse to go scope out the bus stops around our new house. I then decided to see how Stella would walk to school. There’s a path two houses down from us that connects to Buffalo Pass which goes right to the Elementary School. This will be great for Stella as she can walk to school without getting anywhere near a busy road. Anyway backing up to our house there are a bunch of one story “apartment houses” that look like military barracks. The first thing I noticed was that they had a really nice sign with the name of the neighborhood. Then I noticed a sign on one of the buildings. “Curfew 10:00pm. No alcohol allowed.” Which struck me as odd. What is this, temperance housing? so I did some googling and it is public housing. But that’s not the shocking part. The average income of a public housing resident in Austin is $6,558. The average rent is $137. That means that if I do my math properly, the majority of the people in my brand new neighborhood will be making in a month or two, around what my neighbors in public housing to the South are making in a year. There’s a 56 month average waiting period to get into this housing. I have no clue what you do until then. It’s not like there’s anywhere else to live in town for people with that little money.

So the buildings are in bad shape, but the neighborhood is a quiet tree lined no-outlet culdisac that borders a farm and some other neighborhoods. There were a lot of kids playing outside on their playground equipment. In fact that’s what struck me most. The whole existing neighborhood around there is full of kids. There were two baseball practices going on at the elementary school when I went by. Lots of kids playing basketball. It really looked like a fun place to grow up. Our neighborhood currently always seems to have a lone kid on a bicycle. Circling. Hoping that someone will come out and play with him.

But it’s odd because you have prejudices against public housing. And it’s hard to shake those sort of prejudices. But there seems to be some human tendency to not want to be reminded of being poor. Of the possibility that the poor exist. That we somehow equate being poor with crime. And that while we want to advocate for the poor, we certainly don’t want them living near us.

I remember in high school when a band member who was giving me a ride home wanted to drop me off at the corner of my neighborhood because she didn’t feel safe driving into it at night. And I thought she was insane. I mean, my neighborhood wasn’t that bad.And I’m saying “that bad”. Why am I saying “that bad”. There was nothing bad about it. The occasional run down house does not a bad neighborhood make.

But it brings back the year in elementary school when I had two pairs of sweat pants that I wore a lot. But they weren’t eightees sweat pants. The kind with the elastic at the bottom and that ballooned out a little between the waist and ankle. They were seventies track pants. With a white stripe down the side. One pair was maroon (maroon! this was the time of jams. dayglo only!) and one black. They looked exactly like the kind that european hipsters wear now. Except there were no european hipsters in the eightees. This was one of many pieces of clothing that I got from “The Boutique”. Let it never be said that missonaries have no sense of humor. That was the name of the place we could go at the Wycliff Center and get donated clothing for free. A lot of my clothing came from there on and off over the years. Now I don’t think it would be quite as big of a deal. But in the eightees you needed brand names, and things that looked new. And you forget how some days you just wanted to be normal and fit in.

Then there was the year we were going to move to Papua New Guinea for missionary work. My mom bought all t-shirts and shorts for my school clothes. I couldn’t wear shorts to school, so I ended up with one purple and black striped shirt and one pair of acid washed black jeans as my sole new school clothes. That was the year I started junior high. But that was pretty much it for me. That and the occasional envelopes of grocery money slipped anonymously under the front door, were the only things that made me realize that perhaps my family was not seen as being well off.

After all there were kids who had it worse. There was my friend in elementary school who had the free breakfast. All the kids with the free breakfasts got made fun of. I mean, we may not have had a lot of money, but dadgummit we didn’t get free breakfasts. His dad committed suicide. I went to his house shortly after that and it was really odd because his mother wouldn’t come out of the house, but he and his brother seemed almost happy. I guess losing their father hadn’t sunk in and they were just relieved to have a little less depression hovering about. A week or two later they didn’t come to school anymore.

So you know, you always make excuses about how someone has it worse. We always build an idol in our minds of that which is poorer and worse off than us. “Why I live like sultans compared to them.” I just wonder what it’s like for the free breakfast kids. The kids living in the projects. Do they have someone they use as their model of being poor?

In any case, I think it’s going to be very interesting watching how Stella deals with this disparity in her friends as she grows up.

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Comments

Julie (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/julie.html)

2007-03-22T18:08:41.000Z

Your recounting of your childhood made me cry. I want to say “I’m sorry”, but at the same time, is that the right response? Would you be who you were without those hardships? Of course, this is from the girl who never wanted for a thing. The only time I ever felt a pinch was when my father lost his job briefly while I was in high school. We had to buy off-brand lunch meat from Sam’s. We bought the store brands and didn’t eat out. Oh, the horror! But I was old enough to understand and it didn’t last long enough that we had to make serious changes in our lifestyle. In fact, it was kind of fun in a way because my Dad was around a lot and he drove me to and from school and took me to get my license and stuff. I went to an elementary school from 1st through 4th grade that was all upper middle class kids with lots of money. I hated it and switched to a much more middle class school in 5th grade, one that actually had POOR KIDS, OMG, some didn’t even have running water or electricity. It was much better, but I was often embarassed when my friends came over to my big house. Luckily, my parents didn’t spoil me. I drove a POS which I was eternally grateful for when I turned 16, not some fancy new car, and my parents let me know the value of a dollar. In fact, I got a job at 15 just because I wanted my own money that I could spend how I wanted without a lecture:) But I never wanted for anything.

mcoker (http://www.phat32.com)

2007-03-22T19:20:23.000Z

Man, I grew up sooo poor. The first 10 or so years of my life, I grew up in various trailer parks, mom had another baby and we graduated to a house that barely cost more than the down payment on my current house. I was that kid who had free breakfast cards (and lunch, too!), and I was totally hip to food stamps, welfare, WIC, etc. The only cereals I ate came in 5lb bags and visions of big ol’ blocks of cheese danced in my dreams. That said, there’s an RV/trailer park down the road from my house, that I wish would hook itself to the back of a truck and be gone :) Brings down my property value and the appeal of my house, purely from an investment standpoint. And I do care about my house as an investment, as I don’t plan on living there forever. Fucking poor people!! Go be poor somewhere else!

Travis (http://the-holmes.blogspot.com)

2007-03-22T20:24:02.000Z

I got the same crappy kind of treatment in high school. There were some people who wouldn’t give me a ride home becuase I lived in “the ghetto.” Translation: you might have to see some minorities as you drive through, and the houses don’t cost as much as yours.

mcoker (http://www.phat32.com)

2007-03-22T20:36:56.000Z

I still have insanely horrible image issues with my own living quarters from growing up in that environment. Thus, hardly anyone I know has been to my house :(

Ian

2007-03-23T06:40:22.000Z

It’s odd how perspective changes things. I remember being in elementary school where over half the school got free lunch (they didn’t do breakfast at first… no budget for it) and it seemed like the rest of us were close to it. Basically, everyone was pretty much equally poor. There was no ghetto to be in. I don’t remember even being aware until basically being in high school, that there were class distinctions like that. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or bad thing. Just is, I guess. Anyway, so I think I missed something along the way… you guys bought a new house? You’re moving? Since when? What brought this about? Sounds like it’s still close by, but when are you all going to be there?

Tara (http://rabid-fraggle.blogspot.com/)

2007-03-23T16:09:53.000Z

My dad has always made a pretty good living. We have always had everything we needed, and a lot of want we wanted. I think he did a good job of not spoiling us too badly. I knew kids that weren’t as well off as we were, but not really poor by any stretch. Most of the families that weren’t in the same tax bracket as us were much wealthier. There were two high schools in Carrollton, I went to the “other” high school when I was taking summer courses one year. I was struck immediately by how the school was in worse repair, with older fixtures, and that some of the students seemed actually poor. It was an odd to me, and I felt out of place. I didn’t feel like I was better than them, but more like I was intruding in their space. I didn’t have to be there, I was only taking classes so that I could graduate early. I was treated like the outsider that I was, and although I did make some friends, I was more than ready to leave when the summer school was over. Ian, if you want more info on the house situation your should check out Julie’s blog. http://juliesdramas.blogspot.com/

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2007-03-23T16:12:08.000Z

I should probably point out at some point that my point with writing this wasn’t “poor me”, but to question why we are so averse to being around the poor. It’s really fascinating. I think I took some sort of test at that high school in Carrolton. The second story floors freaked me out because they felt like they were going to fall through.

Travis (http://the-holmes.blogspot.com)

2007-03-23T17:00:32.000Z

Personally, the sight of poverty, of people begging or living in a box next to a ditch, or hearing about a single mom who’s going hungry so her kids can eat, anything like that always throws me for a loop because it never fails to knock my own problems back into perspective. I might whine and complain because I don’t have this or that, but right around the corner somebody’s struggling to stay fed. It’s one of those “I’m a whiny white guy who needs to hush and count his blessings” moments. It knocks me out of my comfort zone, which is not a bad thing. As for outright aversion, well, it’s hard to theorize about that without coming across like a judgemental asshole, but I presume it’s a mixture of ignorance about the root causes of poverty (the “why can’t they just get a job” complex), lack of compassion, a violent reaction to being reminded of the reality of human suffering, and/or just plain old xenophobia. Of course, there’s also fear about the mental instability of many of the homeless, like the guy who accosted Ashley and I. That was scary. And since I’ve already made this a long-ass comment, I’d just like to add this: Tim, it is weird trying to write with your Viking-helmeted sneer staring at me. It’s just an odd feeling. Maybe I should just move that part of the browser off-screen.

Ashley

2007-03-25T03:25:00.000Z

For those south austinites familiar with the crockett high school area you will know that it doesn’t pull in any even remotely “well-off” kids. That is for sure. I didnt pay much attention at the time but we had the best house and nicest neighborhood of all the kids that I knew. It just never caught my attention till much later. Especially since my dad got laid off when I was in high school and we almost lost everything, inclduing the house. I remember having 1 pair of white Keds to last the whole year when I was a sophomore. Why did I get white?! My dad was out of work for something close to two years. When I was a wee lass they bused us to east austin for elementary school. That was before the hipsters and yippies “found” east austin. WAY before. That is when I saw my first crack head, homeless, etc…You dont realize how sheltered you are until you aren’t. Until I was almost 7 we lived in Richardson and there were no “poor” people with a very small exception: there were some vietnamese immigrants in a house near the school. I was friends with their daughter. Long story short; when we moved to Austin I started school at Sunset Valley elementary and I asked a hispanic girl if she was French because I had never seen darker skin than mine. yikes!

Caroline

2007-03-27T02:18:23.000Z

Mostly for the bit about the suicide house - I had some exposure to the rest.